HOLY FAMILY

 

House of Christmas   - G. K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth

Out of an inn to roam;

In the place where she was homeless

All men are at home.

The crazy stable close at hand,

With shaking timber and shifting sand,

Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,

And strangers under the sun,

And they lay their heads in a foreign land

Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,

And chance and honor and high surprise,

But our homes are under miraculous skies

Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,

Where the beasts feed and foam,

Only where He was homeless

Are you and I at home;

We have hands that fashion and heads that know,

But our hearts we lost – how long ago!

In a place no chart nor ship can show

Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,

And strange the plain things are,

The earth is enough and the air is enough

For our wonder and our war;

But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings

And our peace is put in impossible things

Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings

Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening

Home shall men come,

To an older place than Eden

And a taller town than Rome.

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless

And all men are at home.

This Holy Family by Andriy Vynnychok  is unique in the placement of the two animals. I love how St. Joseph appears to be holding the lamb, as if to predict the future of his Child, the sacrificial Lamb of God.

Andriy was born  in 1967 in Chervonograd, in western Ukraine. In 1986 he graduated Lviv State College of Decorative and Applied. In 1996 he graduated from Lviv National Academy of Arts. He works in monumental and panel painting as well as in Christian iconography. He participated in exhibitions and En plein air activities in Ukraine and abroad.